


Mother's Love

by wordswithout



Category: Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen, Spoilers, background Tom/B'Elanna, let seven be a happy adoptive mother you cowards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-19 04:16:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22905007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswithout/pseuds/wordswithout
Summary: Seven is flying missions for the Fenris Rangers when she receives a message from Icheb.
Relationships: Seven of Nine & Icheb
Comments: 13
Kudos: 61





	Mother's Love

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Picard fic by timeline but a Voyager fic by heart and soul. That said, major spoilers for Picard episode 5. Yes, including that one. You know. I know.

_**Mother’s Love** _

_This_ _and only this_ _is the truth of it, and all other realities are changed…_

On Voyager she did not often pilot the ship.

Voyager was a Starfleet vessel with a Starfleet crew. Its members were assigned roles according to their individual strengths and fulfilled them according to their individual abilities. It was an inefficient thing, a wasteful, messy, _human_ thing, but at least there _was_ the crew roster and it, to Seven, was right. A drone had its function and performed its function or else it had no use. Seven of Nine was not the pilot.

But on Voyager sometimes things went wrong. Sometimes the crew would become incapacitated. Sometimes the ship would be at risk. And this, Seven came to learn, was the true core of Voyager: though it was not your assignment, though it was not your strength, you would help your others when they needed you, and they in turn would help you. In her time on board she found herself in engineering, she found herself on the bridge. Her fingers slid across consoles and grabbed data padds and pressed down on hyposprays. Her arms hefted phasers and cargo containers. And she spent time in holodecks and mess-hall gatherings – surrounded by others, having _fun_ , though fun was not her designation. If quick-smiling Tom Paris or earnest Harry Kim or determined Captain Janeway – her most of all – if they needed you, you would go. And they would be your friends. Sometimes, rarely, when they needed her to, Seven of Nine flew.

She pilots ships all the time now, of course.

The Fenris Rangers are not Starfleet and their tech is not Starfleet either. Often Seven thinks back to the streamlined efficiency of Voyager: the astrometrics lab, the airponics bay. Even lost and alone, out of date in unfamiliar territory, Voyager was a thing of power. Captain Janeway would wince at _thing,_ but she was not rational with regard to the nature of space ships, she gave them names and personalities and cared for them like they wore comm-badges and officer’s pips. _It is a flaw of mine, that I cannot understand this need to_ _anthropomorphize_ , Seven wondered once. _No_ , answered Tuvok, _it is a logical decision. S_ _tar_ _ships, even very great s_ _tar_ _ships, are not people._

The Fenris Rangers name and cosset their ships too, though their ships are rejects or refurbished from scrap or stolen outright, once or twice. Their ships are a fiddling swarm of flies where Voyager was a bird of prey. But it is a human thing to name, to mythologize, Seven understands this by now. And in battles where Voyager was weak it was her crew, their will, that made her strong. So in the Rangers’ battered ships with their few resources and limited crew, facing endless impossible battles in machines given human traits, Seven pilots, and targets, and experiments, and makes repairs. Specialization is no longer a luxury offered to her. She settles for becoming excellent at everything.

In the star-speckled dark of space that is not her own, Seven flies.

And at the flight controls, limping home after a refugee evacuation attempt turned dog-fight, she receives an incoming transmission from a ship much greater than her own. The message is something of a surprise, and a source of joy. She respects her fellow Rangers but they do not know her as others do; they are not her Collective, and life can be quite isolated. Her Collective is scattered now, rising and falling to their own fates, and some she keeps track of and some she does not and the sender of this message she guards very fiercely, from afar. A scattered Collective is not a severed one – was it Captain Janeway who once told her that? No, it was Tuvok, after Neelix left.

Seven opens the channel, fends off a wave of static ( _this and this and this switch_ , Tom Paris suggested once, _and if all else fails kick the damn thing_ ) and adjusts the sound. The science officer on screen leans forward, like it will bring him closer to her, though this is an inaccurate assumption and she’s sure he knows it.

“Seven!” Icheb says. “It is good to see you.”

He looks very comfortable in his Starfleet uniform, on his Starfleet ship. Seven has not had such satisfying dealings with Starfleet since she came to the Alpha Quadrant – even before the Romulan situation it was clear not everyone was as willing as Captain Janeway to accept former Borg. She found Earth unsatisfying, hectic and noisy and none of it directed at her, and she was not used to being alone in crowds, she did not like it. She did not like the stares and she did not like the insinuations. And though she trusted Captain Janeway and the Voyager crew with her life and things much more valuable, though she would strangle the Borg Queen barehanded for any one of them, she did not, in the end, trust Starfleet. And it did not trust her.

Seven knows it hurt the captain very much: this thing of such importance to her and yet it could not rise to the expectations she had of it, it could not account for all her crew. And Seven knows Captain Janeway would have fought for her, verbally or legally or failing that hand-to-hand, all the way up to the highest admiral, just as she did for her Maquis crew and her EMH. It is one of the reasons why Seven left.

She left the Federation’s politics behind – the Borg do not have politics and on this matter she thinks them the wiser. The Fenris Rangers trounce all over politics in the attempt to save lives and bring order, it is why they get nothing but tepid scolding and occasional back-channel supplies from the Federation, and phaser fire from everyone else.

 _In other words, fuck it,_ and she knows this was Tom Paris. Tuvok had responded, _Please mind your language while on duty, Mister Paris._ The use of “fuck it” in such a context, when there was no sexual intercourse occurring, had been confusing and inaccurate. The captain promised to explain it to her, later on. That memory is a good one.

Icheb looks very comfortable.

She can’t see much of the USS Coleman past Icheb, but she can see how easily he wears his uniform. Her ship’s scans are more limited than Voyager’s or his own but his ship isn’t attempting to hide its location. There are few surprises between the two of them – he sends her messages and even when he doesn’t she keeps watch over his movements, she has her ways – but she was not expecting to find him in this region, now.

“You have permission from your captain to contact a Fenris Ranger and inform her of your position?” is how she greets him. Icheb ignores the question, the way any Borg might ignore things it didn’t care about. It frustrates Seven sometimes, how the legacy of the Collective follows the deassimilated drones, sunk into their skin like implants. _I wish to remove it,_ she said once. _All of it. How?_ And Tuvok had answered, _You cannot. Your past and how it shapes you is a part of who you are._ And Tom Paris had answered, _You can always change – you can always surprise yourself._ And Captain Janeway had answered, _Patience, Seven, and let us help you._ And the Doctor had answered, _Keep busy – time heals all wounds, you know._ And Neelix had answered, _Bad memories, huh? Yeah, I get them too._ And these were all different answers to the same question and it was very irritating. This inefficient, inconsistent crew! Yet she would come to learn that somehow all these answers were the right ones, even though they contradicted each other. If she brought this up to the captain, she knew the captain would smile.

And she knows that the captain would raise an eyebrow at Icheb now, so Seven raises her own. “Do you have permission?” she presses.

“It doesn’t matter,” Icheb says. Now he’s pouting a bit which isn’t Borg-like at all. “It’s. Good. To. See. You. Seven.”

“You must obey your captain’s directives or you could do damage to yourself and your crew,” Seven tells him, then pauses. Allows herself a smile. “It is good to see you too, Icheb.”

He smiles back. “We’re going to be stationed very near you for a while. That’s why I’m – I thought I could come to see you, if there is time. I believe the captain will give me _permission_ to take a shuttle. And I have saved my leave – maybe I could stay, and help you for a while.”

“It would be good to see you,” Seven says. But she is wary, always wary of things Federation these days. “Why are you going to be stationed here? I thought Starfleet was abandoning this region.”

But Icheb _is_ Starfleet – in his well-cut uniform with the red trim. He’d wanted it so badly, studying for the exam on Voyager, hooking his hopes to an organization he’d never seen. “We are not _abandoning_ anything, Seven,” he says. “We just don’t have the manpower right now. With the synthetics...”

“Irrelevant,” says Seven, not harshly. She does not begrudge him his belief, inaccurate though it may be.

Icheb on his ordered, regimented ship – he has seen much, oh, very much in his life but Seven has seen more. Raiders swooping down on unarmed refugee convoys. Riots and unrest, cities aflame. The contraction, whether they will admit it or not, of a Federation that had promised peace and support to all within its borders. _Not the first time,_ Chakotay might point out. A whole Rangers’ worth of outgunned ships, like dozens of lost Voyagers, low on supplies and hope and with no Captain Janeway to lead them. And of course the suspicion cast on Seven herself. Rumors reach her now, about the damaged Borg ship, about damaged Borg people, damaged Borg people disappearing…

Wasn’t that why she asked Captain Janeway to use her pull on Icheb, not herself? To smooth the cracks that might have blocked a young former drone new to liberty and the Alpha Quadrant? On his big safe ship with its safe rules and safe order Icheb is safest of all.

No, no, she does not begrudge him that.

“If you are able to come to me, you should,” she says. “You should not keep this channel open long without permission.” But even so, she cannot help but ask: “They treat you well there? The captain? The crew?”

“Yes, Seven, yes, in fact...”

A gush of words, a torrent. Icheb, on a fine ship, with Starfleet pips against his neck: Icheb’s new adventures, his new discoveries. Access to the latest developments in particle physics, stellar cartography, genetics, theoretical mathematics. He has friends aboard the Coleman who are awed by his history, fascinated by the regeneration bay in his quarters, he has taken it apart to show them how it works. He believes he is making a good impression on his superior officers. He still talks with many of the Voyager crew - “they ask about you, Seven, they understand why you haven’t been in touch but they all say they miss hearing from you” - and in fact he has begun writing letters to Tom Paris, “not even on a data padd, written letters in my own handwriting, I give them to others when they’re rotated off-ship or we dock for supplies, and eventually it reaches him and he writes back. It is very difficult and _very_ inefficient. But Tom says that’s the point, it’s the anticipation, he says it’s something they did in the 20  th  century. He says it’s called _penpals_.”

And to listen to Icheb now you would think him only another eager member of Starfleet, you would not notice anything unusual about him at all, except for the metallic ridge of implants along his brow and nose, and how he says it all not sitting but standing, with his arms held to his sides.

 _I think of him as a child still,_ Seven realizes. _Curious. It is obvious he is fully grown. But I think of him as he was._ She imagines what Ensign Wildman might say about Naomi: _Oh, they’re always your baby, aren’t they?_

 _“_ And you, Seven? Are you...” He pauses, tries to echo her inflection. “Do they treat you well there?”

Seven considers. “It is tolerable.” Exhausting. Endless. A reason to exist.

“Have you made any friends?”

“That is hardly my purpose for being in the Rangers,” Seven says. Icheb narrows his eyes at her. She thinks then of Bjayzl. “One,” she says. “A woman. She is with us on Fenris.”

Seven is quiet a moment, and Icheb waits for her. She had not meant to mention Bjayzl, but her reasons for that are uncertain, unrefined. The relationship has gotten very close, very quickly, and Seven finds herself being careful with it, with how she holds it, like it might tarnish in her hands. She is former Borg, after all. Her early attempts to understand friendship were faulty to the extreme, and _this_ is...something else. A sharing of pasts and futures. So much could be misunderstood. But Bjayzl is very patient, very understanding. Very honest, a trait Seven admires.

“It is...nice,” she says finally. “To be among a friend. I had missed that from Voyager.”

Icheb says, “Me too.”

*

Fenris is not Captain Janeway’s Earth, or Chakotay’s colony or Tuvok’s Vulcan. It is small and dry and sparsely populated, only one continent, only one sea. The Fenris Rangers have thrown up buildings meant for utility, not decoration or artistic value – Seven finds this reasonable and proper, but she can hear Neelix’s opinion in her head and it emphasizes the word _gloom_. Sometimes, striding through the warren of boxy hangers and supply depots, she thinks of this and smiles.

Today there is a new shuttle in the hanger, sleek and gleaming among scuffed hulks. Even the other ships seem jealous, Seven thinks, then chides herself for her own anthropomorphizing. She steps outside the hanger into the harsh fools-gold brightness of a chilly Fenris morning and the Starfleet officer nearly knocks her over.

“Seven!” he says. Hugs her. They’re both a little stiff and yet both a little slow to let go. She puts her hands on his shoulder.

“Lieutenant Icheb,” she says, because she knows how much it delights him to hear it. He beams.

And, no, he is not a child. Standing before her for the first time in a long time she can see this for sure. He has grown into his limbs, traded the sweaters for the uniform so much like those she remembers. He is comfortable with the phaser on his hip. This is a grown man – and perhaps a grown man no longer needs her. But _you know that’s not true,_ Naomi Wildman says, and Seven had always found Naomi Wildman to be intelligent beyond her years.

No one else on Fenris knows her so well. No one else in the universe means to her what he means...and it is not assimilation, this touch, but maybe it’s enough to convey some of what she intends.

“There’s so much going on here,” he says, as other Rangers stream around them. There is always some disaster, some problem to solve. In that way it is not unlike being on Voyager.

“Not enough. We are outnumbered and supplies are limited.”

“I have a month of leave before the Coleman is scheduled to depart this region. Our orders are only to observe – I know,” he says when she bristles. “But there’s no reason why I can’t observe too, while I’m here, from, ah, a closer range.”

“Starfleet won’t appreciate one of its officers getting involved in an armed conflict without permission.”

“I’m not going to get involved, I’m just going to help observe, from my shuttle.”

She lifts an eyebrow. “And what will you do with what you observe?”

He grins. “Pass on the information.”

“I believe your time on Voyager was a bad influence on you,” Seven says, and then someone calls her name. Almost.

“Annika!”

Both Seven and Icheb turn as Bjayzl approaches. As ever she stands out. Where most Rangers, Seven included, favor practical clothing, subdued styles, Bjayzl wears a flowing tunic with wide sleeves and her black hair up in a complicated puff. She loves to complain about the wind staining her clothing or mussing her hair; Seven would think her very foolish if she didn’t know how reliable she is in a fight. Instead she thinks her a true _individual_ , and feels Captain Janeway’s approval.

Bjayzl says, “I’m going to get something to eat, d’you want to come?”

“I will join you shortly,” Seven says. She watches Bjayzl smile past her at Icheb, watches her eyes fix on the glint of winter sun off Icheb’s Borg implants. “Jay, this is Icheb, my...”

A difficult sentence to finish, when what he is is a feeling, a sense of world’s righting at her core. But Bjayzl, as always, is very astute. She smiles and holds out a hand that Icheb shakes.

“I was wondering when you’d arrive. Annika wouldn’t talk about you at all which means she was thinking about you all the time. I’m Bjayzl.” She scans him again, again her gaze lingering on the implants a second longer than anywhere else, and then— “Annika,” she giggles, “you didn’t tell me he was cute.”

Icheb stammers something. Seven takes Bjayzl by the shoulders mid-giggle and turns her firmly in the direction of the base cafeteria. “I will join you shortly,” she repeats, with a huff of a laugh.

“Fine, fine! It’s good to meet you, Officer.” In an exaggerated whisper: “I’m just saying, it’s the uniform.” And then she goes.

“Don’t take it personally,” Seven says. “She’s like that with everyone.”

“Oh,” says Icheb, who’s still a little flushed around the neck.

“Even with those at a much different stage of life than—”

“I’m not a kid, you know,” he says.

Seven relents. “No, you’re not. You’re a Starfleet officer,” she says quietly. _This feeling in your chest,_ Chakotay would tell her, _that’s pride_.

“She calls you Annika?” Icheb asks. He knows as well as anyone on Voyager how she’d never quite adjusted to the name, her name, the name of who she was. It had been left in stasis, perhaps, trapped in the Collective; it hadn’t grown along with her.

“She can be very...insightful. The giddiness is something of an act. You find yourself telling her more than you’d intended.”

“And you call her Jay,” he observes. “You two must be very close.”

“Yes.” Seven cuts her eyes at him. “And you must be tired if you have just arrived. I’m sure you continue to neglect your biological needs.”

“Seven—” He snags her arm as she starts to walk away. “I want to help. I know the Rangers are pretty autonomous, if you don’t have need for me than I’ll find someone else...”

He is a grown man, and a Starfleet officer, and nothing of hers to order or forbid. These are all obvious things. But obvious too is the memory of his face ashen and sweat-soaked, his body struggling to adapt to an experiment she’d _ordered_ him not to try, his angry voice saying, _Let us help you!_ And how close they came to disaster.

“...Observation only,” Seven says at last. “No targeting, no risks. Nothing in this region is stable any longer and opportunists are everywhere. Avoid them. And when you’re done return to your ship.”

If she wishes he might stay longer, not for any mission but so the two of them can – as Neelix would put it – _catch up_ , she doesn’t say so out loud. He is Starfleet. Cursed as they all are with a need to explore. How often had she argued the point with Captain Janeway? How could Icheb, given new life on Captain Janeway’s Voyager, ever be anything else?

“Understood,” says Icheb. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

And so he is.

The first two weeks are smooth ones. Icheb leaves and returns with intel, and the other Rangers, a motley bunch, are mostly accepting of this ex-Borg Federation man in their midst. To be sure there are snide comments, now that the base hosts two former drones, “jokes” about new Collectives and mind-reading and _resistance is futile, yeah_? Icheb is unconcerned and Seven can send most people fleeing with a look. Bjayzl tells her not to take any of it seriously. Seven tells her she never has. The first two weeks are smooth.

The third week Icheb is given new coordinates as well as new orders from his captain: the USS Coleman will be ending its observation mission earlier than expected, the Federation’s constriction is speeding up. He will have to return to the Coleman after this last run; then he will be gone from this sector, and he and Seven may not share space again for a long while. She is used to this, she had expected this, she spares a curse for Starfleet.

And she will keep track of him, of course, once he’s gone. She will always watch his path. For now she tells him to fly carefully on his last mission for the Rangers, and watches him set off in that sleek, gleaming shuttle, which is ultimately only a shuttle. No great craft. No Voyager, no Enterprise.

She waits until he is out of visual range and then returns to her alcove, which she has set up in the same hanger as her ship for easy transfer. When he returns she will…but it doesn’t matter. They’ve said goodbye before. Seven steps into the alcove and falls back into the embracing mechanical hum, says, “Activate regeneration sequence,” falls further back into binary nothing nothing nothing

nothing

nothing

nothi-

The computer sounds a warning and the regeneration cycle disrupts. Irritated Seven opens her eyes and there’s a Ranger there, a Romulan, tugging her arm. “Seven,” she says, “it’s your friend Icheb. He sent a message to say he’s investigating a distress signal near Daimanta but we haven’t had contact with him since. We thought we should tell you—”

*

She had gone once to the holodeck on Voyager, a place she did not often frequent. Frivolity was a senseless pursuit; better to work, or failing that regenerate. But the ship’s sensors had located B’Elanna Torres there and so Seven entered after, leaving the solid world of the vessel for a sudden softening of sand, sea, heat, things called birds flying in arcs overhead. They were making noises and were very annoying.

B’Elanna was down by the shoreline, in a large reclining chair. It was cumbersome and mostly cushion, which struck Seven as odd for the location. She approached, frowning at the sand, at the salt air, and stood just behind the chair. “Lieutenant Torres,” she said.

The lieutenant’s eyes were closed, one arm over her face, and she did not open them when she replied, “Tom programmed it. Insists it was all the rage back in the 20 th  century, calls it a ‘La-Z-Boy.’”

“Lazy,” repeated Seven, and arched a brow.

“I know.” B’Elanna dropped her arm, open her eyes and sat up, carefully. “Hate to admit it but it’s the most comfortable I’ve been in weeks.”

Seven studied her. The lieutenant was quite pregnant, a fact that seemed to require careful movement and a limiting of energy. _This manner of procreation is extremely inefficient,_ she thought but did not say.

“Did you need something?”

“Yes. A power conduit on deck 8 is malfunctioning. It is affecting the scanners in astrometrics.”

B’Elanna slid back down with a sigh, the manufactured breeze catching at her t-shirt. The lazy chair had a special appendage to prop up the legs that she popped up with a touch of a button. Once settled she said, “Sorry, I’m off duty. Carey has engineering this shift, go tell him.”

“Lieutenant Carey does not possess the required skills for this task.”

“Seven, he’s my deputy in charge and it’s one power conduit. What skills does it need?”

“It is the third malfunctioning conduit on that deck in one week, and an unexplained residue was found on the last two,” Seven reminded her. “It could be evidence of a larger problem.”

“Usually is. Oh, hell.” B’Elanna shifted her weight. “There’s a sweet spot in this damn chair, if I get it just right...” She saw the look Seven gave her and bristled. “Look, this one hasn’t stopped moving in two days, which means I haven’t gotten any _sleep_ in two days.” She rolled her eyes. “Klingon babies. They come out fighting. Point is, I am in this chair for the next hour, at which point Tom gets off duty and he’s going to come with dinner in hand and program himself a chair next to me. Power conduits, alien invasions, time paradoxes, it’s all going to have to wait.”

“I do not understand your priorities,” Seven told her, which would not usually be a wise thing to say to B’Elanna Torres, but now she only sighed again and kicked off her shoes.

“I’m too tired to fight about power conduits,” she yawned. “Which shows you how tired I am. You should get one of these chairs. Might clear a few things up for you.”

Seven said, “I prefer to stand.”

The holodeck doors whisked open behind them. The lieutenant, whose eyes were closed again, said, “If that’s Tom without my dinner tell him I’ll throw him out an airlock.”

But it was not Tom Paris. Icheb stepped as warily down the beach as Seven had, and was as unamused by the birds. “Seven, the readings are _inaccurate_. I had to pause all my research.”

B’Elanna bared her teeth in what could theoretically be called a grin. “Hello, Icheb,” she said. “Do me a favor, consider me dead for the foreseeable future, all right?”

“All right,” said Icheb, perplexed.

Seven tried to explain. “Lieutenant Torres is preoccupied with her impending labor,” she said.

“It’s not _impending_ —”

“This manner of procreation is extremely inefficient,” Icheb said.

B’Elanna’s eyes opened into slits. “What.”

“A long-lasting drain on stamina, physically cumbersome, not to mention the risk to the mother’s own life, and the resulting child is helpless and needs instructing for – well, the other children were _always_ asking me questions. A Borg drone is able to perform its functions from the very beginning, and any necessary maturation is kept separate so that all drones may achieve peak performance. Isn’t that true, Seven?”

“It is,” she conceded.

To her surprise, B’Elanna laughed. “Yeah, when I was your age I didn’t want kids either,” she said.

“I do not understand...”

“Icheb,” said Seven, “if you cannot complete your work you should go regenerate.”

“But I do not want to...”

“Your wants are irrelevant.”

When he was gone B’Elanna echoed, “‘Your wants are irrelevant?’ Careful, Seven, he’s going to start rebelling with that attitude.”

“Icheb is a loyal member of this crew and has shown no signs of mutiny,” Seven said, a little hotly. She had adapted to the chief engineer’s emotional responses and she believed the chief engineer had adapted to her, but their first months on board together had not been friendly ones. Still, B’Elanna was only smiling.

“No,” she said, “I mean – no one likes hearing their opinions aren’t important, especially kids his age, especially from his _mom_.”

“Your theory is incorrect. There is no biological relation between us, I am not his-” _His mother_ . Cruel, selfish, careless mother. Sacrificing her own son. And _her_ parents: clumsy, blind, naive. Parents leading their children into danger. Unacceptable.

“We have met Icheb’s mother and I do not desire a comparison between us,” Seven said.

B’Elanna’s eyes softened. “That’s not what I meant. Pregnancy isn’t the only way to become a parent. Blood ties aren’t the only ones. Look.” She swung her legs to the side of the lazy chair and began the work, now something of a process, of standing up. Seven had been told (by the Doctor) that offering others “a hand” was appropriate and polite. She had also been told (by Harry Kim) that it was neither of these things to B’Elanna Torres, pregnant or otherwise, and that doing so might cost you your hand. So she stood still and waited until B’Elanna was on her feet.

“ _Fuck_ this is ridiculous,” the lieutenant growled. “I swear if Tom wants more kids he’s going to be the one to carry them.”

Seven raised an eyebrow again. “Is that possible with Klingon or human biology?”

“I will _find a way_.” She brushed sand off herself, then looked back at Seven. “What I was trying to say is that it’s obvious Icheb looks up to you. As a role model, someone he can relate to, to guide him. Someone he wants to impress and matter to.” She shrugged. “Sounds like parenting to me.”

Seven frowned at the waves curling towards their feet. “But that is...in the Collective it is not a matter of _impressing_ or _mattering_ to anyone. You perform your function. Nothing more. If I am a role model – then I must not be a sufficient one.”

“Why not?”

“Icheb is often obstinate. He gets lost in his work and neglects his regeneration. He...”

“He’s a _teenager_ . Ask the Doctor about teenagers sometime. Ex-drone or not, he’s a teenager getting his first taste of freedom for the first time in his _life_. That doesn’t mean you’re not a good example for him.”

“But his biological parents – they were not good for him. They could not be _trusted_ .” The urge was there, as it still sometimes was in moments of distress, to grab B’Elanna and _force_ understanding, the pure instant understanding of assimilation. Words were not enough! Words could not convey the necessary complexities! But the urge was a small one, malformed and stunted, and easily held down by the individual who carried it.

She thought, _Individual_. She thought, _Role model_.

B’Elanna was still looking at her, sympathetic, as if she did understand. “Not all parents are good ones,” she said. “Not all families are...happy.” She twisted her lips, shook her head. “But you don’t have to be like them. It’s not _easy_ . Not everyone can do it, or _wants_ to do it, it’s not as simple as following orders from up high. But here we are. Doing our best.” She gave an expansive, sarcasm-soaked shrug. Sarcasm was a very common emotion for the lieutenant, Seven had noticed, but it was a sarcasm with layers, with varying intentions, with depth.

“Who says we can’t have one big old happy Borg family on board?” B’Elanna asked. “Stranger things have happened. _A lot of strange things have happened_.”

Seven focused back on the ocean. There was no tide programmed into the holodeck display and the water never progressed in its grasping, neither pulled forward nor fell back. It was...unsatisfying, to look at.

“And you are...certain of your own abilities to provide adequate parenting? Knowing the consequences for your failure?”

B’Elanna bit her lip. Frowned. For a while there was only the noise of the ocean and the birds. The breeze chilled the back of Seven’s neck.

“...I’ll get back to you on that,” the lieutenant said at last. She did not look happy. Seven nodded.

“If it helps,” she said after a time, “you have always performed your duties exceedingly well. And I expect it will be no different with this one.”

B’Elanna shook her head again. Smiled just slightly. “Thanks. But I’m still not fixing your blown conduit.”

“It is hampering Icheb’s studies.”

“I’m heartbroken.” She swiveled back to the lazy chair and growled, “I’m also getting back into this thing and not _moving_ for the rest of my _life_.”

“You will leave the active child-rearing to Lieutenant Paris, then.”

B’Elanna cackled. “Goddamn right.”

After, when Seven left the holodeck, she found Icheb hovering out in the hallway in direct disobedience. She suspected he only pretended to look apologetic.

“I will accompany you, then,” she told him. “We will both regenerate.”

Icheb fell into step with her. He was a lanky being, and sometimes it seemed he did not quite know how to place his own limbs.

“Why do they do it?” he asked. “They have the technology to keep the species alive in other ways! Reproduction _is_ dangerous and inefficient. It is a serious challenge that provides nothing but limited future companionship.”

Someone was whistling down the corridor to them. They passed Tom Paris, arms loaded with mess-hall trays, who nodded at them and kept going. Seven watched him stride toward the holodeck. He was still whistling, poorly, when he entered.

“Perhaps that is why,” she said. “Companionship. A future.”

Then Icheb did something very unusual for a Borg, but Seven thought that maybe it wasn’t so unusual for a _teenager_. He rolled his eyes. They went forward to the regeneration bays, together.

*

Seven has modified her ship, repaired it, maintained it, integrated Borg technology on the sly into it. It is _her_ ship, no one else in the Rangers can get it moving as fast and on-target as she can. And right now it is not enough. Right now nothing, _nothing_ , is enough.

She hardly recalls leaving Fenris, hardly recalls any talk of bringing others, making a plan. No. There is only one plan and it is Seven pushing her ship’s engines to the limit of their capabilities. There are only the facts: a distress signal near Daimanta but now no sign of distress, and no sign of Icheb’s shuttle. Scanners are clear, he isn’t there. Isn’t anywhere. _Where_?

This is not a panicked flight. Seven is cold in a crisis, she’s been told this many times. If she were to panic, she would hear Tuvok say, _Focus. Clear your mind. Fix yourself only on the task ahead_. And on Voyager she was rarely the pilot but now, but now, she is _flying_.

She hailed the Coleman as she shot deeper into the sector but did not wait for a response, no time, they were too far off and there would be _politics_ , a need for explanations and orders and _why was a Starfleet officer running missions for the Fenris Rangers_ and they would not be like Captain Janeway, they would dither, they would not _help_...

She is tracking him. The Rangers could not, the Coleman could not, not without time to locate the shuttle or Icheb’s comm-badge, both of which she is already scanning for and failing to find but there are other ways, always other ways. Ex-Borg are not so common in this or any other quadrant. She has spent a life on Voyager, adapting, rerouting. And on her ship her specialized scanners (they’d impressed Bjayzl; “Annika,” she’d said, “I’ve just never met anyone like you before.”) are stuttering, straining, cutting through atmospheric resistance, through all the unsubtleties of space, straining further, she is ruthless at the helm, ramming her palm into the console so hard the implants on her hand bite into her skin, the console running so hot now the computer chirps a warning, her ship’s engines and scanners both shoved to relentless maximum and still she hammers at the controls, she is the pilot here – compatriot of Tom Paris, crewmember of Voyager, she will get what she wants, she _will_.

(A thought: Bjayzl has been out on a mission for some hours. If there is anyone nearby Seven trusts as backup, it’s her. She sends a message and goes back to sipping off the edges of life-support. More energy for the scanners.)

She is far past Daimanta now, nearing the edge of the region itself. How far…? And then the scanners beep.

The computer tells her she is entering the Hypatia system. The scanners tell her they’ve located life signs and Icheb’s bio signature. Tuvok tells her, _Lieutenant Icheb is not a high-ranking Ranger and his disappearance could bring the forceful attentions of Starfleet. Why target him?_ Harry Kim tells her, _They’re not gonna get away with this_! B’Elanna Torres tells her, _Break someone’s face._

The Hypatia system. Planet Vergessen. There.

The signal is stronger now. Seven cuts her engines, pulls up information on the planet. There isn’t much. M class. A humid climate. And there is something about a decommissioned research facility, several domed buildings hooked to each other by paths, but it’s all been classified away.

Seven checks the heartbeat of the scanner’s signal. It stutters once.

She tries to get a lock on the bio signature but it’s been blocked or tampered with somehow. Her transporters, hardly the best, slide over the signal like oil on water, no matter what inputs she enters, even when she tries to send something down rather than take something up. The whole planet has some sort of defense system blocking transporter links, but the interference is especially strong over what Seven assumes to be the research facility. Decommissioned? Everything has gone lawless now that the Federation’s turned its back. Seven yanks open a hatch and sticks both hands wrist-deep into the guts of the console. This ship may not be Voyager, but it is hers. She knows it well.

She spares a second to send both the Coleman and Bjayzl her coordinates. If the Coleman lumbers over quickly enough its superior capabilities may be enough to force the transporter issue. But there isn’t time to wait. She will land her ship on the damn planet if she has to, dodging its defenses. She will crater it into the facility’s walls.

Icheb’s bio signature stutters again. Seven hisses between her teeth – _we are Borg_ – and a wire sparks and the transporters hum. She still can’t lock onto Icheb, but she can lock onto herself. She grabs a phaser rifle from its tray and she is gone.

and she is…

now…

in a darkened room, a storage room from the looks of it, dusty gear heaped on shelves. There is a smell though that’s stronger than dust: a mix of blood and fear and excrement permeates the whole place. Someone outside the room lets out a muffled sob. The door is near, open a crack. Seven hefts her rifle to her shoulder and peers out.

There are several people, walking about a wide, cluttered room in surgical dress. There are deep pools of shadow everywhere, but a light at the far end, behind a curtain. Much of the room’s activity is focused on that light. Seven squints, her ocular implant clearing away the dark. She can see the shadow of one of the masked surgeon figures behind the curtain, leaning over a medical bed with a drill-like instrument in hand. There is someone on the bed, bound to it—

He screams.

Seven shoots through the door, catches the nearest person in the head. She has tampered with her phaser (set just now to kill) so that it makes very little noise but the sound of the body hitting the hard floor will alert at least a few of the others. Someone is already coming closer, some sort of guard by the look of things, pulling his weapon, kneeling by the corpse:

And it’s B’Elanna Torres with her as Seven hurtles into the room, pulling the trigger when she has to, getting her hands around another’s neck, going quietly as she can and it’s B’Elanna who leads her, B’Elanna’s stubbornness, her protectiveness, her anger mixed with Seven’s own. The shadow is still screaming and writhing on the bed. Seven snaps another neck and grabs the man’s phaser and now both her hands have weapons to fire and she does. It is a very wide room with much to hide behind and B’Elanna also knew from stealth.

The screaming chokes off into a wet gurgle. The surgeon with the drill is saying something to him that’s half-drowned by his moans. “...here somewhere, buddy,” she says. A pause: she has heard someone cry out across the room. She turns her head. “Is that you…?”

Seven of Nine raises both weapons and fires.

Someone behind her yells.

Seven whirls around, buffered by her duo-rage, and drops one phaser rifle so she can hoist the masked figure up by her neck with a free hand. The woman in her grasp kicks and gasps, eyes wide, scratching at her hand, but Seven possesses superior strength. She could crush this woman’s windpipe without effort. She lowers her just enough so that the death can be face-to-face.

“Why,” she says. If she were Captain Janeway, she would say more. If she were Captain Janeway she would say in a low low voice that curled into snarls: _Who the hell are you to_ _touch my people._

The woman only begs mercy. There is something familiar with her eyes above the surgical mask, something familiar with the thick black hair falling messy from a bun down her forehead...

And now amid the bodies it is Chakotay with her. _Control yourself_! he says. _This one can’t stop you, let her go._ _The fighting’s over, you have a crewman down! Get to him, Seven_!

Seven flicks her fingers against the phaser so that it sets to stun and then she drops the woman, angles the weapon and fires. The woman slumps. Not a killing blow but at such close range there will be damage. Seven kneels down, though she does not want to, does not want to know, but in the end she has spent her life among Starfleet, too, and with her free hand the explorer pulls away the mask.

Stares.

The face is unfamiliar.

This dizzy feeling is also unfamiliar. A sense of difference, like a corner of the universe has heaved. She thought...why had she thought…? _Doesn’t matter. Let’s go._ She takes Chakotay’s advice.

Hurries toward the bed, at the feet of which the surgeon lies blank-eyed and dead in a puddle of her spilled instruments. Near her hand is some kind of bladed forceps, yet unused.

Seven rips open the curtain. Icheb is strapped down to the blood-soaked bed, still in the Starfleet uniform of which he’d been so proud. The uniform is damp at the chest and the wet patch widens with every breath. There is blood all over his face, all over his neck, his hands scoured with signs of a futile struggle against his bonds. The implant over his eye has been ripped out, the wound fresh and welling sluggishly. His frightened eyes find hers and he whimpers. “Suh-Seven...” he tries.

 _This isn’t a surgery, this is a butchery! Hasn’t anyone here heard of the_ _Hippocratic_ _Oath?!_

The Doctor’s outrage gets her moving. “Icheb,” she cries, puts her hand on his cheek. “I’m here. I’m going to get you out.”

“My...t-they wuh-wanted...Seven, please...”

His eyes won’t focus on hers. He’s been drugged, she realizes, enough to deaden his limbs but not enough to knock him out. He is still conscious – his implants were cut from deep in his flesh and he is still conscious!

 _Not all his implants. Focus, Seven. He needs to get to a medical bay,_ Seven tells herself using the Doctor’s words. Icheb moans, blood dripping from his nose, from his mouth. Her Icheb.

Now it is B’Elanna’s disgust, it is Captain Janeway’s fury, it is her own unadorned rage. Her fingers shake with it. For Borg there are no emotions, nothing at all, and Seven has never been sure which she has learned and which she has only mimicked but now she knows. Terror, and anger, and desperation, and love. And none of them are helping her.

“H-hurts, it hurts, it...”

“You’ll be fine. I’ll save you. You’ll be fine.” She rips at the straps, freeing him, her Icheb. _He will survive this. He will adapt._ That is her own voice, caught in a plea. She pulls him toward her, cradling him, scrambling to find his pulse. His soft _hgk_! of pain burns through her.

“Seven,” he mutters, limp in her arms.

“You will be _fine_. My child. You will be!”

She is wild now, Icheb is suffering and she does not know what to do. One drone is nothing without the Collective! And she is not even that! She is an _individual_ , and so is he, her kin, her _child_ , and he is _dying_ —

A flicker as someone materializes. She whirls with Icheb still cradled against her.

Bjayzl spots her and him and drops her phaser, a hand fluttering to her mouth with horror. “Annika!” she cries. “Gods – we got your coordinates – the Coleman is here, they’re trying to get a lock!”

Again there is that brief dizzy sense, that sense of something in the bones of things gone wrong. But it is _not_ wrong. The Coleman will have a fully stocked sickbay, they will be able to help Icheb. “You will adapt,” she whispers into his matted hair.

“Annika...” Bjayzl comes toward them, stepping over the unconscious body of someone who only looks like her a little. Touches Icheb’s shoulder, very lightly, and then moves her hand to Seven’s shoulder and keeps it there. “What happened here?” she breathes.

Seven says, “The Coleman will transport us aboard. He will – we will – be fine.”

Perhaps it is Naomi Wildman behind her, who says, _Oh, Seven. I knew you could._

_*_

They are not thrilled to have her aboard the Coleman. Ex-Borg, Fenris Ranger, opinions about Starfleet that would crack a data padd. She suspects they blame her for leading Icheb astray, although that blame fades as search requests are made and results arrive, as the “decommissioned” facility on Vergessen is searched. Those rumors of vanished former drones cease to be mere rumor. A black market of Borg parts is suspected. The Coleman’s captain mutters, “This is about that damn cube they’ve got,” and then refuses to say anything more within earshot. Seven doesn’t care.

She finds the Coleman’s sickbay poorly organized and its medical staff ill-equipped. She tells them so. She tells them so several times. Once Icheb is stable she has him moved to his quarters – she deems them acceptable but only just – and settles in to keep watch. Bjayzl has gone ahead to warn the Rangers. Seven misses having her near.

Icheb regains consciousness with Seven watching him. Because they are both former Borg, they do not find it necessary to speak.

Eventually, when it’s clear his body will be able to adapt to the loss of the stolen implants, Seven allows herself some badly needed regeneration. Though not a full cycle. She awakens to find Icheb sitting up, frowning over his torn, bloody uniform. “You can replicate another,” she says.

“The captain was here. He says I’ve got to stay on modified duty.”

“Yes, you need to recover.”

“But even after that. Until they figure out who...why...”

Seven can see on his face how much he hates the thought. Brilliant, curious Icheb. He always hated to sit around.

“I want to help them figure it out, I _told_ him that.”

“It will be too dangerous. You have already been damaged.”

“Irrelevant.”

“ _Hardly_ irrelevant.” He is surprised, a little chastened by the sharp tone.

She sits on the bed beside him. He glances at her, asks the computer to raise the light; with the ocular implant partially removed his eyesight has suffered.

“I’m sorry I worried you, Seven.”

“It was not your fault.”

“Still. You know...you know what they wanted? What that woman was…? My cortical node. Which I don’t have. Because you have it. Funny, isn’t it?”

“I don’t get the joke.”

 _That’s the trouble with_ _the_ _Borg,_ she can hear Tom Paris sigh. _No sense of humor._

Icheb goes back to scowling at his ruined uniform. Seven takes it from him.

“Rest, now,” she says. “Then you must regenerate.”

“Seven, I _know_. How old am I going to have to be before you stop telling me to regenerate?”

Somewhere Captain Janeway is smiling.

“Age is irrelevant,” Seven tells him, and puts the uniform aside.

**

_The shudder of the ship through turbulence distracts her. Whatever she had been thinking about is lost. It doesn’t matter. Everything that can be done to a starship she has lived through, and anyway, this ship is not her own. It doesn’t matter. She turns her ear and hears the voices of Picard and the others, some argument, Picard trying to play referee. None of it matters except for the ship they’ve cost her. Another debt she’s owed. Likely she’ll rack up more on Freecloud._

_Seven leans back against the window, watching the stars flash past, and her earlier thought returns to her, a feeling really, a distant sense of time out of joint. Only for an instant. Then gone in the turbulence. Now she can’t pinpoint where or what it was._

_It doesn’t matter._

_She keeps her eyes on the window and sees nothing of any use, and inside_ La Sirena _is nothing too. Seven has never enjoyed isolation. But after letting Bjayzl fool her, after letting Icheb die, she is very used to it now._

_And this, and only this, is the truth..._

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts on this fic that I was possessed into writing by Captain Kathryn "don't make me come down there and reset this timeline until my Borg are happy" Janeway:
> 
> 1) I love the idea of Voyager's crew functioning as a replacement Collective for Seven, and I love the idea that she uses their voices and memories, not as some disembodied barking of orders but as goalposts and motivation. Found family let me show you it. It also gives me the chance to try writing as many different voices as I could fit in!
> 
> 2) I know the timeline's a little wonky, especially wrt to B'Elanna's section - I had it placed sometime around "Friendship One" but by that point Carey's already dead and, hell, Star Trek timelines never make any sense anyway. Plus I kinda like the idea of having little "wrongnesses" scattered through the story. Little flaws in the canon as we watched it.
> 
> 3) This reality, as with I suspect most of our realities, is a reality where Chakotay/Seven absolutely never happened and thus is not referenced. I like to think of C/7 as "something that happened in that one episode where everyone had virus-related fever dreams probably best blamed on Neelix's cooking and never referred to again." 
> 
> 4) After watching Picard ep 5 did I go back and torture myself by watching all the Icheb episodes of Voyager? I absolutely did. Join me. Share your suffering. And let me know what you think!


End file.
